


In Her Bones

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Julia Burnsides Lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: She lives through the destruction of her home, but still they're separated, until Julia sees the green light, and the blue light, and has to figure out what to do next.





	In Her Bones

When the smoke cleared, Julia Waxmen-Burnsides was astonished to discover that she was alive. Sheer dumb luck that she hadn’t been with her father at the Hammer and Tongs, but instead visiting one of their suppliers at the edge of the Corridor. Everything in the center was just...gone. And already Kalen’s small group of remaining loyalists were fanning out through the city, looking for the Revolution’s ringleaders, and thank the gods Magnus was gone to Neverwinter. She knew, she just  _ knew _ he’d try to fight, when they had nothing left, and everyone else was fleeing the ruined city. In her heart, she too wanted to fight, for her father’s memory if nothing else. 

But her father was just a memory, and the shop he’d dedicated his whole life to was just a memory, and Kalen’s forces would be looking for her. Magnus wasn’t going to come back, she felt that in her bones. He had a wandering spirit, that was one of the things she loved about him and one of the things that she’d always worried about— that the wanderlust (or his jumbled memory) would draw him away from Ravens’ Roost. Only now she was the one being drawn away, hurrying off with the clothes on her back, the tiny amount of coin in her purse. 

She went to Neverwinter, looking for him first of all, hoping he’d stayed there, hoping she could find him again. But he wasn’t there. She found someone at the showcase who said he’d gone back right away, left without even waiting for the news that he’d won. Of course he’d won, of course that beautiful chair with its lovely smell had been first prize. It was still on display when she got there, even though he was gone. She ran her hands over the silky surface of the armrest, tried to let the lavender soothe her. But it was no use. He was gone, probably fighting Kalen again, probably…. She couldn’t think it, but the dread sunk into her heart the way the smoke had seeped into her hair, the way she could still smell it even hundreds of miles away.

Then she was stuck in Neverwinter with no money and no connections, and maybe it was “never winter”, but that didn’t mean the streets weren’t cold at night and somehow, somehow she had to get by. And she’d been a guerilla fighter, same as he had, and it took her awhile to get the hang of a place so large and crowded and complicated, but she got by. Thieving and fighting and odd jobs for blacksmiths, and her father would have been mortified but sometimes a night under guard by the town watch was at least safe and dry. But then she gets into entirely the wrong crowd, because honestly, she’s too tired and angry to be smart, and she has to get out of Neverwinter in a hurry.

After that it’s caravans and hardscrabble life on the road, and sometimes when bandits show up she’s on the merchants’ side and sometimes she’s on the highwaymen’s side, and either way, folks who underestimate her only do so once. But always she asks about Ravens’ Roost, is Kalen still there, has anyone seen Magnus Burnsides, and the answers are rarely what she hopes for. Although, since folks abandoned the Roost, Kalen seems to have disappeared as well, and good riddance to bad rubbish, although she’d love to get her hands on him, or even some of his folks who’ve all scattered to the winds. But eventually she stops asking: too painful getting her hopes up, and she realizes if she doesn’t want  _ him _ to find  _ her,  _ she’d better change her name as well. Even if it feels like losing husband and father all over again.

Still, time goes by, and despite herself, she starts to rebuild her life, accumulate a little purse, gather a network of people she can go to for help, acquire a reputation, even if it’s mostly among disreputable people. She’s reliable; she takes dangerous jobs and finishes them; as long as it’s from folks who have more than enough, she doesn’t ask a lot of questions. And she’ll tell you right away if it’s a job she’ll take or not.

There’s a job she doesn’t take; those Rockseeker brothers are entirely the wrong kind of trouble, and it’s too far to travel. Might as well leave it to whatever fools are checking Craig’s List these days. Besides, after years, searching and then pointedly  _ not _ searching, she’s got a lead. Not on Magnus— Mags is dead, she feels that in her bones— but the man who she’s certain killed him. Takes her months: he’s half a world away, using a different name, working in a different system. She has to save up money, take jobs that take her farther from her goal. Spends a little time— too much time— in the Goldcliffe racing scene, until things get too weird and too hot. Bad magic, and folks getting hurt: it’s not worth the money.

Back to Neverwinter, and a stretch in the guard, which feels painfully ironic: listening to the obnoxious boy prince scold everyone, when a few years earlier she was trying to steal from his father. There’s word he’s getting ready for some special quest, and now that she has enough money it seems like time to bounce. Guard training makes it easy to get a gig with the despot Kalen’s hitched his star to, when she gets there; she can act fancy enough for a court on top of being tough enough to fight.

Solstice coming, and they have a big party here, with feasting and dancing and costumes. She plans and she prepares and every second she wishes Magnus was there. Not that he was any good at planning; she just misses his company, even after all this time. She takes out the chain with the wooden ring on it, runs her thumb of the grain.  _ I love you, Jules,  _ that was the last thing he’d ever said to her, and she’d just been joking with him.  _ Smells like grandmas,  _ and she feels a little foolish and a little regretful, but she tries to at least remember the smile on his face, and gods it’s been so long, too long. She hates how much the memories have faded.

She’s in her anonymous uniform, armor with her faceplate down, ring on the chain well hidden under plate and padding and shirt. The party goes full swing as everyone’s anticipating the glorious natural drama of the eclipse, something brilliant when the world’s seemed so faded and dim. Instead: chaos breaks loose everywhere, the palace swarming with some invisible foe; she’d be terrified, except she hasn’t felt fear since she woke up in a burning building half a dozen years ago, and it’s the perfect cover to get close to him. Kalen, gone dissipated and lazy, always half-drunk. If it weren’t for other people always around she’d have killed him weeks ago.

He calls the guards, begs for protection, and so no one will notice when she’s one of half a dozen in armor around him. No one will notice when she turns ever so slightly and her sword isn’t pointed out at whatever unseen demons fill the palace. She leans close, hearing his frightened sour breath; she wishes he were frightened of her. Her knife is at his throat.

“This is for Magnus,” she hisses, and his eyes are confused, and at the same time that she’s slit his throat some weird force has stabbed him through the chest. It barely missed her. There’s a long scratch across her armored chest, and there isn’t time to feel...whatever it is she feels having finally succeeded. She’s fighting for her life instead.

Then: blue light and green, an infinite instant that changes everything. A hundred years, all at once, and  _ Magnus _ , her Magnus, her lost beloved, not at all who she thought he was. And yet— exactly the man she knew, the man she loved. 

The fighting resumes all around her, and they can see the Shadows now, which is good because all the other guards are fighting. Even the fools and fops of the court are fighting. Which is good, because Julia is frozen in place, Kalen’s cooling corpse nearly forgotten; if she weren’t wearing armor she would be curled up on the floor. Her boy. Her beautiful lost boy. Her brave darling man, and so much more.

And the Shadows are gone, all at once, in a blaze of light more felt than seen, and Kalen is just a corpse in a pile of corpses, and she looks up at the second moon. It’s not a moon, and that’s where his people were, and a tiny hope uncurls around her heart.

It took her a long time, after that; struck with a shyness she hadn’t felt since she first saw him walk into her father’s shop more than a decade ago. She’d cropped her hair, and it’s threaded with grey. She’d gotten scars and lines and eyes more wary than open, and she didn’t know if she was ready for him to see her like that.

But she needed him to know, at least, know that she’d lived, and Kalen had died, and so finally when her work— back to the mercenary grind she knows better than anything else now— takes her back to Neverwinter. Of course she knows that Taako has a school there; there isn’t anyone in the world who doesn’t know that, whether they want to learn magic or not.

She’s ready for it to be awful and awkward.  _ I’m the woman your boyfriend married when he forgot you existed.  _ She doesn’t quite know which of them is the other woman; maybe both of them. She hasn’t followed the gossip, if there is any. Too painful to wonder what he’s doing without her.

She didn’t make an appointment; she didn’t think she could pretend to be a potential student of magic, or the parent of one, for that long. She relied on presence and charm and bluster— and the fact that his office door was open, Taako’s long legs propped up on the desk, and his artless drawl beckons her in: “Talk to me, bubbeleh.”

He cries, which from everything she saw, anything she’s heard since— that’s not something he  _ does.  _ And then she cries, which after these years gone past isn’t something she does much either. He’s sharp and witty, and also kind; he pulls her out the door in a flounce, tells everyone not to wait, he’s got  _ very important shit to take care of, my dudes _ . Which turns out to be making her tea and cookies and asking all about Magnus’s years at the Roost, asking what she’s been doing, almost touching her knee and then pulling away, his eyes soft with concern.

He tells her to wait there, and while he goes off into another room she looks around the house full of the lives of Magnus’s other family, the one he had before she knew him, the one he had after her. Pictures and mementos, the piano with a wooden duck atop it, the familiar style in an unfamiliar place. There was a duck like that on their dresser, one of many.  _ Why ducks, hon?  _ she’d asked, and he only ever said, _ I just think they’re neat.  _ Answers to questions she had barely thought to ask.

Taako comes back with more cookies, more tea, and his knee bounces a little as he talks about the school, maybe a little too fast but she’s glad to have him carry the conversation a bit. She’s reeling. She’s happy to be here, accepted and welcomed, and yet. It’s a relief to let him talk while she tries to absorb where she is and who she’s with.

And then the door, and barking, and an enormous wolfhound runs up and puts their face into her face. Voices around her, Taako scolding about  _ damn dog,  _ and another voice  _ get down off of Taako’s guest, Johann.  _ And then, the realization: that’s his voice. She’d forgotten what it sounded like. She’d forgotten.

She stands. He’s in the doorway. For a long moment, just the sound of the dog barking, and then it stops.

Taako breaks the silence with a barely audible laugh. “Somebody say something?”

Like that, the spell is broken and his arms are around her and they’re both crying and the dog is running circles around them. They knock their foreheads together, and it’s like they weren’t separated for even a minute. She doesn’t know why she stayed away.

“Jules.” His voice is so thick with tears. “I almost…. I thought….” Later, he’ll tell her about the cup, and the choice it offered him, and they’ll cry again: for each other, for her father, for their friends.

“Mags.” She touches his face; he has new lines and scars as well. They’re all beautiful. “I got him for us.” She can barely see him for the tears. His brow furrows. “The day…. That day…. I killed Kalen, baby.” He blinks and shakes his head, and the confusion is a spike of ice in her chest. “Magnus? Honey?”

Taako behind them clears his throat. She turns in Magnus’s arms and he’s shaking his head. “Wonderland stuff, babe,” he says to Magnus, and now she’s frowning. Taako sighs, looks at Julia. “Taako’ll get you caught up on all the haps,” he says.

“Hooboy,” says Magnus, laughing through his remaining tears. He buries his face in her hair, she drops a hand to rest on the dog’s fuzzy head. “A lot to cover, y’know?”

“I know,” she says. She knows, and she doesn’t know, and it’s a little scary not to know, and yet. She leans back against him: Magnus, whom she knows and doesn’t know, but she’ll trust him with her heart and the future she had thought was lost. 

The future turns out to be something unexpected, and delightful for that. He’s famous and beloved, and already when she came back into his life he’d turned that to so much good, because of course he had. Not merely the one dog who she already was in love with, but training so many dogs. He wants to help everyone, he wants to  _ rebuild  _ the Roost, and she’s by his side with hammer and nails. Building again; she hasn’t built anything in so long. Constantly she stops herself simply to look at him. Magnus Burnsides, alive.

Candlenights comes, and it’s on the moon. Which isn’t a real moon, but the fake moon, and the serious woman with the twinkle in her eye is their hostess, is her husband’s dearest oldest friend, and she’s surrounded by friends. She looks at the folks who saved the universe, the world’s greatest detective, the avatar of a goddess: and she can call them friend. Magnus throws his arms around her, her arm is around his waist; he keeps telling her not to feel so intimidated, but how can she not?

There’s a moment, as the window in the floor drifts over what surely must be Ravens Roost, when the bone-deep ache of loss is almost too much. So much that was is now gone. But Taako kisses her on the cheek and hands her a canape  _ I can trust you to give me a useful opinion, unlike this garbage can  _ and Magnus laughs. Angus runs up and presses a neatly wrapped rectangle into her hand— almost certainly the new Caleb Cleveland novel— and Merle is telling a very bad joke her father would have absolutely loved as Lup screeches her disapproval. And this is home: her hand in his, and all around them a family rebuilt.

**Author's Note:**

> This started with a tumblr post about someone faking their death and then talking to their former partner's new partner, and something about that shook loose this idea. I sort of started with the image of Taako and Julia talking and worked backwards from there, oddly enough. Thanks to the WDA for the usual screaming, to Nick for reblogging that post, and to Kath for saying "needs more Magnus." (don't we all)


End file.
